


Stoned Peaches

by Daenys the Dreamer (lovely_ericas)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovely_ericas/pseuds/Daenys%20the%20Dreamer
Summary: A character study of Bella





	Stoned Peaches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kieraembers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieraembers/gifts).

_When she looked, she saw more serving wenches than any inn could want, and most of them young and comely. And come evenfall, lots of men started coming and going at the Peach. They did not linger long in the common room, not even when Tom took out his woodharp and began to sing "Six Maids in a Pool." The wooden steps were old and steep, and creaked something fierce whenever one of the men took a girl upstairs. "I bet this is a brothel," she whispered to Gendry._

\- A Storm of Swords, Arya V

No one had ever told Bella exactly in those terms that she was old King Robert’s daughter but she knew it all the same. Even those who doubted it had difficulty refuting it especially since Bella had the coal black hair and dark blue eyes of House Baratheon. And who could it be if not for the king himself? Renly was too young and Stannis was, well, Stannis.

In any event, King Robert had sought refuge at the Peach before the Battle of the Bells. That was well known fact around Stoney Sept. Her mother had been one of the girls at the Peach then, just a few years older then than Bella was now. He had gone to bed and lain with all the girls but Holly, as Leslyn always told it, had been his favorite.

Bella did not much resemble her mother, shorter and slimmer with dark brown hair that lightened in the sun whereas Bella’s never did and brown eyes that almost seemed green.

Holly no longer lived at the Peach. She had a small little cottage of her own on the opposite side of town and every fortnight or so if Old Leslyn was in a good mood, she let Bella spend a night at her mother’s home. Although Tansy was the innkeep, having inherited the post from her father, everyone knew that Leslyn was still in charge.

Though Bella loved living at the Peach, she also loved the special quiet evenings that she shared with her mother. She and Lanna were the only two girls who had also been born at the Peach but Bella was the only one who ever went home to her family. Lanna’s mother had died of the Sweat when she had been only five and the others had come to the Peach under far different circumstances.

Bella liked to say that she had been named for the Battle of the Bells although Mother had never precisely said that either. When she had been very small, she had liked to imagine though even then she had known the unlikeliness of it that the king had held her as a brand new baby and given her her name. But that was nonsense; by the time her mother had birthed her, Robert Baratheon had already been crowned king in King’s Landing.

What Bella did not particularly like was when her mother began to pester her about how many coins she had stashed away or about finding a keeper. A keeper in Stoney Sept was unlikely but finding one outside Stoney Sept all the more unlikely. Once a girl of the Peach could have aspired to become the mistress of a Piper or Smallwood but the Pipers had scattered and the Smallwoods had no living sons and neither Lord Smallwood nor Lord Piper was the type to indulge with women during such a fraught time as this. This left only the merchants who lived in their big houses below the Sept. Holly had been mistress to one of these such men who had given her gifts of jewels and dresses and when he died left her a large sum in his will. In any event, there was something very unglamorous to Bella about the idea of belonging to a merchant.

Bella didn’t like to look to the future overmuch. The War had brought with it much excitement like the Brotherhood who frequently sheltered beneath the walls of the Peach. The men brought news and rarer gifts of food or money or clothes. Bella looked forward to their visits and to anything else that broke the monotony of her days. The little girl dressed in Lady Smallwood’s daughter’s dress had been one of these.

Cass had snapped up the dress and taken it to her room. She was sweet on one of the farmers who lived on Pinkmaiden land and only came to Stoney Sept on market days. Often on market days, Cass disappeared for hours at a time, reappearing near nightfall with a pink face and a glow about her.

Bella did not want to be the wife of a farmer. She liked men and didn’t mind working hard but she had never met a men she would have wished to marry her and she certainly couldn’t imagine agreeing to marry one who would expect her to do the backbreaking work of being a farmer’s wife. Bella liked life at the Peach. She was friends with everyone who worked there, even prickly Alyce.


End file.
